


On Mosquitoes

by MagicalSpaceDragon



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Soulbonds, Tarvek Contemplates His Own Mortality, mentioned Gil/Tarvek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 12:33:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19768279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalSpaceDragon/pseuds/MagicalSpaceDragon
Summary: He feels far,farolder than he's ever expected to be, right now.





	On Mosquitoes

**Author's Note:**

> me, sitting bolt upright several pages ago: WAIT, SO THAT'S A SOULBOND, RIGHT? WE'RE ALL AGREED THERE'S SOME METAPHYSICAL, TIME-BASED CAPITAL-C CONNECTION BETWEEN TARVEK AND HIGGS RIGHT NOW?
> 
> anyway if by some miracle there winds up being a spot in canon that this actually fits into, please pretend that i did it on purpose

Tarvek has never been particularly vexed by the thought of his own death.

He doesn't look _forward_ to it, of course—he has no shortage of family who would be happy to oblige him if he did—and he doesn't passively accept it, either. He intends to survive for as long as he can possibly get away with. He's just never expected to be able to get away with it for long.

He feels far, _far_ older than he's ever expected to be, right now.

All this, all he has ever known, is transitory. Impermanent. He thought he was aware of that—he _was_ aware of it, learned it well enough when the school on Castle Wulfenbach was torn away from him, when he was called home to find his sister dying, when he found Gil starting to smile at him and trust him, when he found himself trusting Gil and smiling at him back. But that's all so _small._ The world is dizzyingly old, and he and everything he loves and everything he hates are all going to die in a wink that, cosmically, amounts to no time at all. The Storm King? Who will give a _damn_ about who was Storm King in a thousand years? Ten thousand? Ten _million?_ All of this is so _petty_ and it's—it's _funny,_ is what it is, that he can still care about _anything_ in the face of the vastness of the past and the future and the _now._

"Can hear you thinkin' from over here, sir," Axel Higgs says mildly.

He hasn't had the opportunity to ask the Jägergeneral what this is like from his perspective, what kind of feedback _he's_ getting. Does he feel Tarvek as a leech, bloodsucking maw latched relentlessly onto his years? Is he more like a mosquito, tiny and buzzing and easily swatted? A tick, perhaps, a difficult-to-remove carrier of disease—

"I'm feeling self-deprecating at the moment," Tarvek says, slipping easily into his _idiot fop_ voice for the benefit of the British agent across the room. "Settle something for me. If you had to compare me to a parasite, any parasite at all, what would you say suits me best?"

Higgs contemplates that for a while. The agent is attempting not to laugh into his tea.

"Some kind of fungus," he says finally. "One of those little shelf mushrooms that grow on the sides of trees. I'm not an expert on fungi—" Even odds as to whether this is a lie. "—but I bet there's at least one of those that's poisonous."

Ardsley Wooster finally gives up the charade and snorts. It'd be irritating, but frankly the man seems to have been having a nervous episode for the past several hours, and Tarvek is actively making the choice to sympathize.

A mushroom: something that feeds off death and decay. A tree: old, ancient, and too massive and steady to be particularly bothered by mere mushrooms. "Unconventional but not inaccurate. What kind of poison, would you say?" Mycotoxins exhibit a truly stunning variety even _before_ sparkwork comes into play. A fatal hallucinogen has different implications than one that targets the heart, has different implications than one that induces terrible vomiting, has—

"One of the ones doctors use," Higgs says. Tarvek blinks. "I'm certainly no expert on poisons, either, sir—" That one is _definitely_ a lie. "—but it seems to me that half the time medicine is just poison that someone figured out how to use to keep people alive."

Tarvek takes a breath that wouldn't appear especially deep or steadying to anyone except perhaps Violetta, if she were paying attention. That's twice now, in quick succession, that Axel Higgs has said something so kind to him. "Are you giving me _cheek,_ lackey?" It's too much, far too much, and he'd think the man were trying to manipulate him onto a leash if he couldn't feel, deep in bones that aren't his, the sheer horrific weight of spending one's short, insignificant life _lying about everything_. It's profoundly suffocating and it makes it his impulse to trust the man, even though he's had far more practice than Tarvek in living with that feeling, he could be just like Tarvek in that despite all the claustrophobic pressure it's still easier to lie and scheme and—

"'Course not, sir," Higgs says, in the precise tone of someone who is _very patiently_ obliging an idiot lacking the common sense the Creator gave zinc.

Tarvek has to stifle a laugh. "See to it that you don't."


End file.
